The subject invention relates to printing indicia, such as indicia which evidence payment of postage for a mailpiece, on a substrate, such as a mailpiece envelope. More particularly it relates to positioning of such indicia for printing where the printable and unprintable areas of the substrate vary and the substrate includes reserved clear areas, i.e. areas where printing may be possible but is excluded by the application software, in compliance with postal service regulations or other reasons.
Recently a new way of franking mailpieces to evidence payment has been developed and introduced by the assignee of the subject invention in accordance with the Information Based Indicia Program (IBIP) of the U.S. Postal Service. Unlike previous forms of proof of payment such as stamps and postage meter indicia, IBIP indicia do not rely on details of the printing process to provide security but instead incorporate encrypted information unique to each indicium which cannot be produced without knowledge of secret cryptographic keys. IBIP indicia have many advantages. For example, the information incorporated into the indicia not only provides security against counterfeit indicia, but allows the Postal Service to more closely track its operations and the needs of its customers. A particular advantage of IBIP and similar indicia is that, because they do not rely upon particular details of the printing process for security, mailers can print indicia themselves with a conventional digital printer. The Assignee of the subject invention has recently introduced a service under the trade name CLICKSTAMP® ONLINE which enables mailers to print IBIP type indicia using their own digital printers.
The advantages of such a service are apparent since mailers can now generate postal indicia with their own general purpose data processing systems and digital printers. A corresponding problem however, is that, with the wide variety of systems and printers in use, printing various sizes of mailpieces, it becomes difficult to assure that the indicium will be printed in accordance with the Postal Service regulations since different combinations of systems and mailpiece size can have different printable and unprintable areas. This problem is further complicated by the greater size of IBIP type indicia and by the Postal Service requirement for a reserved clear area for provision of a “FIM mark”. (FIM marks are marks printed on a mailpiece which are used by Postal Service automatic mail handling equipment to identify the printed surface of a mailpiece and its orientation. By Postal Service regulation FIM marks are positioned along the upper edge of the mailpiece a specified distance from the right edge.)
Thus it is an object of the subject invention to provide a method for producing a mailpiece having a properly positioned IBIP type indicium even though the indicium can be printed by different systems on varying sizes of mailpieces.